


counting the wars and broken bones

by thennevermind



Series: what we have to lose [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Alphonse Elric, Dead Van Hohenheim, Edward Elric Keeps Alchemy, Edward Elric Keeps Automail, Fullmetal Alchemist Ending Spoilers, Hospitalization, Restored Alphonse Elric, ed knows about the multiverse, its mostly subtext but its there, its not the next plot point nor is it the biggest one but its there, theres some set up for another little plot point in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28512408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thennevermind/pseuds/thennevermind
Summary: The days after the coup were mostly filled with sleep, reading, and meticulously categorizing the new pieces of knowledge that Ed received from Truth and Hohenheim's sacrifice. Sometimes, though, the brothers would talk about nothing and everything.This, however, was quite the pivotal conversation.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric
Series: what we have to lose [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1917763
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	counting the wars and broken bones

**Author's Note:**

> > "counting the wars and broken bones,  
> haven't we lost enough already?"
>> 
>> -EDEN, wrong
> 
> this is more of an interlude between the first part and the rest of the story. i hope y'all enjoy! 

The temperature in the hospital room was difficult to quantify. It was neither too hot nor too cold. If he thought about it for long enough, Edward would swear it was one or the other. In some moments, there would be an overly cool breeze rushing through the room which would make Ed shiver down his entire body. After the quick pass of cold would infiltrate the room, it would level back out into the uncertain medium of odd-yet-comfortable temperature. He assumed they were regulating it as best as they could, considering the state of the patient lying in the hospital bed in the middle of the room. 

Alphonse lay asleep underneath the admittedly heavy blanket. Edward had taken to watching him sleep, happiness settling nicely in the pit of his stomach. He had a book in his lap, but it wasn’t as interesting as watching his brother sleep peacefully for the first time in several years. He would make some funny faces every now and then, not use to the feeling of dreaming. 

Ed wasn’t technically supposed to be in this room. He was mostly patched up from the fight: a bandage around where the steel rod had punctured his right arm, some new stitches in his side and several other places, and a few butterfly bandages on his face. He wasn’t cleared from the hospital yet, mostly because of the atrocity of his wound from being impaled in the side a few months ago, but the bastard Colonel had pulled some strings so that he could visit Al sometimes. Then again, “sometimes” quickly turned into staying there every hour of every day until he inevitably had to go back to his hospital room for the night. 

Al shifted in his sleep.

Ed was honestly surprised that he was being left alone. The public was in chaos. The government was in equal, if not more, chaos as well. Taking down a corrupt leader who happened to be a semi-immortal alchemically-created monster bent on killing the entire population of the country would do that. Yet, here Ed sat in the setting sunlight, two days fresh off of a coup, and no one was bombarding him with questions. There were no inquiries about his part in the fall of the Fuhrer, about his disappearance months prior, or the treason that he probably committed. He was at peace, watching over his brother sleep.

The two brothers had talked little over the past two days. Most of what Alphonse did nowadays was sleep, which was honestly valid for what his body had gone through while in the Gate. That didn’t stop Ed from thinking about what he was going to say. They needed to clear things up, to talk about what happened right after they exited the Gate. When Holenheim died. 

Edward had yet to tell Alphonse about how he had felt their father’s soul literally pass through him after he died. He had yet to tell him what Holenheim had said in Xerxian, or what Ed had learned when he went through the Gate.

Who knew that the multiverse existed? Edward. Who knew how to mold molecular structures to change into different materials with a disgustingly complicated alchemic circle? Edward. Who knew seven new languages and countless new theories and practices for alchemy? Edward. He had a constant migraine trying to shift through all of it. In the beginning, he thought that he might have known all of Truth, but upon closer inspection, there were holes that had yet to be filled. Ed didn’t know if that was Truth’s way of promoting the idea of research, or the fact that he hasn’t sacrificed enough to see the entirety of it. Ed didn’t want to know what the cost of that would be. 

Actually, he could ask Truth if he really wanted to. Part of that new knowledge was information on how to get to the Gate without performing human transmutation. Ed didn’t know how to explain it, or exactly why Truth decided that Ed needed to know it, but a thought in the back of his head told him that Truth got amusement from talking to the eldest Elric brother. And, possibly, that he was the only alchemist in the history of this world to perform the taboo four times, and that granted him several privileges. Edward had yet to find out what those privileges meant, besides literally able to contact god.

Maybe that was the only privilege. Edward hoped it was. He had spent enough of his life being special; he didn’t need yet another reason to be.

As if summoned by his older brother’s self-deprecating thoughts, Alphonse shifted in his sleep again. Only this time, his eyes slowly blinked open and fluttered to focus on Ed.

“Brother?” Al’s admittingly horse voice quivered out, slicing the silence in the room. Ed shifted, moving to the edge of his seat to be closer to Al.

“Hey there Al. Have any nice dreams?” Edward’s tone was low, but inexplicably full of love and joy in seeing his brother in flesh and blood. It was the best thing to come out of the entirety of Amestris dying and being revived in less than a minute. 

Al immediately brightened. He had taken to talking about his new-found dreams quite often. He had confessed that it helped with the overstimulation of his starved, touch-starved body to talk. “Yeah! We were in this school, but it was a castle and alchemy was incredibly simple and overpowered and called magic with wands and broomsticks and potions, and we were in this gigantic library studying for a class or something, and you pulled out a wand and floated a book that you needed right to you! It was so cool. You were wearing this green tie underneath your red cloak and you looked like Christmas.” 

“That sounds…” Ed paused for a moment as a scene flickered into his mind. A large castle full of moving staircases and sentient paintings; a trio of children dressed in red and black wandering down a hall, talking animatedly. “Really interesting, Al. Was it based on something we’ve read?” That was the only explanation he had, currently, for the odd feeling of familiarity he received from Al’s story.

Al thought for a moment, shifting under the weight of his covers. “I don’t think so. We don’t usually read fantasy things. Even as kids, we were always more into science.”

“Alchemy is far more interesting than make-believe worlds. And useful too. I mean, look where it got us, saving the world and all.” Al’s face shifted into an exasperated expression, but his body language said he was uncomfortable. Ed was momentarily taken aback about how easily emotion showed on his brother’s face. He was so used to reading the body language from a suit of armor that he almost missed the change on Al’s face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Al replied, relaxing his body (and face by proxy). “Just… bright in here.” 

Ed, not wanting his brother to be overstimulated to the point of a meltdown, quickly stood up and went to close the blinds. Meltdowns happened easily, and frequently, over these past few days. His brain chemistry was way out of wack, not to mention the lack of normality Al had right now. They figured out very quickly that Al recovered from his episodes much quicker when Ed was present, though. Ed guessed that was a part of the reason he was allowed to spend so much time in Al’s room.

There was an elongated beat of silence as Edward closed the curtains and turned off the overhead lights. He probably didn’t need to, but it was ancient muscle memory that sprung into play the minute that Al requested anything to help minimize overstimulation. Some things stay with you, especially as an older brother. 

When Edward came back to sit near the bed, Alphonse cleared his throat.

“I know you might not want to talk about it,” Al started, which made Ed cringe. Nothing good would come out of his brother’s mouth next. Not after that introduction. “But… what did Dad say? In Xerxian? I… I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I just… really want to know.”

A stone hit Edward’s heart, ramming into his chest without warning. Of course, Alphonse would want to know what Holenheim said in his last moments. He, unlike Ed, still had faith and love for their father, even till the end. 

Ed shifted, not knowing exactly where to start. Most say that starting at the beginning is best, but at this moment, something pushed him to begin at the end. “His last words were, ‘I love you, my sons.’ So. There’s that.”

Al gasped, to which Edward was not surprised. He had always craved love from their missing father, so to hear that those were his last words probably was heartwrenching. Alphonse probably saw him as a man with a loving heart but burdened with a dangerous duty that he had to leave everyone behind to accomplish. Edward saw a cowardly man who left behind a mother and two children to fend for themselves, not bothering with a letter or a call, not attending the funeral of the woman he loved. 

“Really?” Al whispered with a wispy look in his eye. The fact Edward could say that was another jolt of happiness to his heart. He succeeded in what he set out to do: return his brother to his body.

“Yeah. Before that, he said his journals have Xerxian culture or someshit. And ancient alchemy. And apparently his fucking life story.” 

“Ancient alchemy?” Al pipped up almost before Ed finished talking. Their words slightly intersected, but Edward was fine with that. Alphonse should be talking as much as possible in Ed’s opinion. It was pure comfort to hear his brother’s voice again without its unnatural metallic tint.

“Apparently,” Ed was slightly taken aback, wondering why Al would be more interested in that than their father’s story and history. Maybe he didn’t admire the man as much as he thought he did. “But I don’t know exactly where they are yet. The journal is encoded, for one thing, even if it is in a dead language. I’m not even close to cracking it yet, but I mean, I’ve only been at it for a day and a half and it’s not like I’m swimming in resources in a hospital.”

“So,” Alphonse started, head tilting and eyebrows scrunching. His eyebrows were scrunching! His face was moving! Al was more than a voice, hollow in empty metal. “Are you going to continue to work for the Colonel?” 

Ed stopped. 

“I… hadn’t thought of that.”

Al seemed to catch onto the pause in Ed’s thinking. He sat back farther into his pillows, arching another brow at his brother and giving him a look that read ‘well?’ There was a glint in his eyes, sparking there at the marvel that was being back in his own body. Even if Ed was too wrapped up in his own thinking, even if the expressions were for no-one but himself. Alphonse was ecstatic about being flesh. 

“I always said that I was only doing this to get our bodies back…” Edward trailed off again, tapping his finger against his chin despite the shock of pain running up his forearm from his wound from being impaled. He would have wrung his fingers together, but he was still missing his automail arm. “Well, your body. Mine didn't really… come back.” 

“And how you're wondering if you should continue so we can have access to the libraries to crack these journals.” Al smartly left out the argument of Ed not gaining his body back. It was a conversation–or yelling match, depending on how it went–that both of the brothers understood that they would save it for when they were both healthier.

Ed hummed out a small confirmative sound unconsciously, but didn't elaborate. Al, seemingly catching onto his brother's apprehension, quickly began talking. “You don't have to! We don't have to search for the journals if you... don't want to.” 

“Ancient alchemy? I want my hands on that. I’m not all-knowing quite yet, Al,” There was a long pause as both thought over that idea. Alchemy was an ever changing force, a science that continually made progress and breakthroughs. It would be an amazing opportunity to learn what was thought to be lost, if only to make further progress on the alchemy today. There might even be a way to reverse otherwise thought permanent alchemic changes. It would make a way for Ed to get his limbs back, for the Colonel to see again, and for Teacher to regain her internal organs. 

“I’m not going to pressure you into a decision. Maybe you can take a break for a while? Help me recover, go back to Resembool and recuperate from… well… what happened.” Al made a good point. Even if he wasn’t outwardly showing it, Ed was traumatized. Al was traumatized. They both took part in a war that they were too young for, one that they should have never participated in. The two barely had any time to overcome past traumas either. Ed immediately began to recuperate from the human transmutation as soon as possible, getting automail surgery to be able to join the army to amend his mistake. 

“Sure.” Ed agreed as his face softened. His eyebrows scrunched again before a moment passed, conflict clear on his face. “I don’t want to put off this decision until later though.”

“You don’t have to know everything right now, Brother.” Al murmured, shifting in his bed. The sheets made a shuffling noise, the texture grating on his skin. He would have to ask Ed to get safe fabric. 

“I think I’ll keep doing it,” Ed’s tone was concrete, a firm decision voiced. “It will be best for both of us, and Colonel probably won’t want to give up his Alchemist of the People his soon after a coup.”

“Alright, brother.”

The two shared a nod in response to Ed’s decision, though neither of them were completely happy about it. Al didn’t like the idea of not being able to follow Ed around on his missions, considering his current bed-ridden pridictiment. Similarly, Ed didn’t like the idea of leaving Al behind. Neither liked the idea of Ed continuing to be a child soldier, even more now that they were fresh out of an actual coup. They both got a taste of it, and they both hated the idea of counting more wars and even more broken bones. 

But they would persevere, moving on and forward. It was all they could do.


End file.
